Owl to Susan Sto Helit (closed RP for Susan and Charles Macaulay)

[charlesmacaulay]

((Backdated to just after Henry Winter and Camilla Macaulay's wedding.))

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[usethepoker]

Now that the wedding was over, Susan felt like she could let herself go a little. She'd been operating at something close to a fever pitch since Halloween, doing her (admittedly not very helpful) best to make things as easy for Camilla as she could, all the while trying to assimilate much of what had hit her on Halloween. Between that and her bouts of Dreamless Sleep-potion sedated unconsciousness, she was thankful indeed when Camilla and Henry were safely away, so she need do nothing at all.

Doing nothing at all was not something Susan was accustomed to, though, and as a result she was soon both bored and lonely, as well as tired. Charles's owl was a surprise, and definitely a welcome one--she'd liked him immensely, which was rare for her, and it occurred to her that with his sister away, perhaps he was as bored and lonely as she. So she dug out parchment and jotted an owl back:

Charles,

I like the sound of that. Where should we meet?

-Susan

[charlesmacaulay]

(( Okay, substitute!Charles reporting for duty. I'm not going to change anything in the post Penny wrote, but there may be minor inconsistency between what she wrote and what I play.))

At Hampden, Charles had favored local holes-in-the-wall, places his friends would never be likely to turn up; places where the matronly barmaids would think he was a Mormon missionary because he was wearing a suit. He hadn't ever gone to Hogsmeade for the purpose of painting the town red, but if he were to frequent any place there, it'd probably be the Hog's Head.

He could make a good impression when he wanted. There were ways and ways of making a good impression, however -- there were subtleties of perception to consider. Things one person would find indecorous, another person might find quaintly bohemian, or excitingly dangerous, or not in any way remarkable.

Susan was a woman with black-and-white hair who wore black to a wedding where she was the maid of honor.

Charles wrote:

The Hog's Head. I'll meet you in the Ravenclaw common room

[usethepoker]

Susan had heard of the Hog's Head--it sounded a lot like Biers, her favorite pub back on the Discworld, where nobody paid undue attention to anyone else. It certainly had to be better than Madam Puddifoot's, she thought, with a wry smile.

Charles,

Sounds like a good plan to me. No, I haven't got anything planned for this afternoon; honestly, I'm a bit bored with Camilla and Henry away.

-Susan

[charlesmacaulay]

Common room at 3 pm, then? It gets dark earlier and earlier.

-Charles

When he showed up, he was neatly dressed if a little threadworn: one of Francis's old suits, altered to fit, and the same white dress shirt he'd worn to the wedding, with a very nice tie that also had once belonged to Francis. However, one thing was conspicuously absent: he wore no kind of winter coat or gloves, no hat, nothing against the Scottish winter chill.

He was whistling Camptown Races. "Hullo," he said cheerily.

[usethepoker]

Charles,

That works for me. See you then.

-Susan

Susan normally paid very little attention to her clothes, but even she realized that actually going somewhere necessitated something other than her worn skirts and shirts (many of which bore a few interesting stains). She did have some decent clothes, and after rummaging in her closet had actually managed to procure some--a soft cashmere dress that she couldn't remember buying. Black, naturally, along with her rather worn cloak (she really did need to get a nicer coat, sooner or later) and gloves.

"Hi," she said, immediately noticing his lack of winter attire. "Aren't you going to be cold?"

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles gave a pleasant little laugh. "Fair point. Maybe the pub hasn't stocked up on firewood this early in the winter. You're smart to have bundled up."

Which wasn't the answer she was probably expecting, but she'd see soon enough what he meant.

"I don't guess it's very cold in Greece even this time of year," he mused, his smile fading to a somber look. "Cold enough though. They weren't planning on snorkeling or anything, were they?"

Of course they weren't. He just wanted to see if Susan knew what they were planning on doing. Besides the things he didn't want to think about, that they didn't have to go to Greece to do -- that he was sure they did all the time anyway. He'd actually cussed Henry out for it once (drunk outside the classroom, ranting: isn't that what you do to my sister every night? His attitude then had been a mistake, Charles could see that now, a tactical mistake, though eminently understandable and reasonable surely

[usethepoker]

"I go outside quite a bit," she said, following. "I learned the hard way that Scottish winters are rather damper than where I come from, and that damp seems to sink right into your bones."

Susan had very little idea where Greece even was, but she'd been given to understand that it was in a place rather warmer than Scotland. "I doubt it," she said. "They both seem to be museum types. Can you imagine Henry trying to snorkel in a suit?" She couldn't--the idea of Henry in casual clothes or some kind of swimsuit just Did Not Compute. Susan herself had never really thought of the other aspect of their lives, even though she had certain intimate knowledge of Camilla in that context, at least. That, however, was definitely not something she was about to impart to, well, anyone. The thought that Charles might have ulterior motives for asking was not one that occurred to her at all--much like his sister, he could be disarming without even trying.

[charlesmacaulay]

Well, now, that mental image was well and truly amusing, and therefore eminently welcome. Charles chuckled -- a lower echo of his sister's familiar sweet little chuckle. "No, I guess not. Poor old Henry. His idea of fun might leave something to be desired. When Camilla was a kid she'd probably have swum halfway around the island. Guess she's really grown up now."

No condemnation implied, but more than a little sadness -- and the clear implication Charles didn't necessarily think that growing up was the be-all and end-all of human achievement.

"The museums must be something, though," he continued, walking along companionably with Susan, leading her up to nowhere other than the Room of Requirement. "Lots of fascinating ancient things. There are temples on the nearby island, you know. Delos. A lot of history there."

Charles knew about having a lot of history.

[usethepoker]

"From what I saw of Camilla as a child, I'd believe it," she said. "Did she tell you about the incidents with the chocolates? She and I both turned into children a while back, thanks to those damned enchanted chocolates. A boy made her angry, so she climbed up into a tree and wouldn't come down, despite Silas's pleading." The memory of the giant monk entreating Camilla to get out of the tree was one that made Susan smile even yet.

She thought she vaguely recognized their way, but only vaguely--she'd only been to the Room of Requirement once, for the wedding itself. "I have to admit, my knowledge of this world's history is spotty at best. I've read a bit about the Napoleonic wars, your First World War--quite a bit about that--but beyond that I know very little."

[charlesmacaulay]

... Yes, Charles remembered very well one of the incidents with the chocolates. He hadn't known about the chocolates themselves at the time. He'd simply come across a seven-year-old Camilla, wandering the hallways, like a ghost materialized from his memory by magic -- and, of course, it was magic. He hadn't been able to tell little Camilla that.

"She didn't tell me the part about the tree," he said, sounding more nostalgic than anything else. "She used to climb trees like a raccoon when we were kids. I always thought it was because she didn't want to be left behind. But I did know she'd turned into a child a while back. We played Go Fish." He chuckled. "Don't tell me she dragged you into something too. And I feel sorry for the little boy, whoever it was."

[usethepoker]

Susan laughed. "Go Fish? It would have been better for everyone if we'd all found something as innocuous as that. She didn't drag me into anything--unfortunately, I got into enough trouble on my own, leading a little squad of other children to attack the Whomping Willow with croquet mallets." Hey, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. "Needless to say, we lost."

From the sound of it, Charles had seen Camilla even less than Susan had, lately. It made sense--Camilla and Henry had both been insanely busy with wedding plans, and Susan knew full well she was worse than useless when it came to that sort of thing. While she had actually missed very few people in her life, she could nevertheless understand the feeling.

[charlesmacaulay]

"... Okay, I know what the Whomping Willow is, but why did you lead an attack on it? What did it ever do to you?" He affected a tone of mild reproach. "Good thing we have a decent hospital wing here." Charles knew that from firsthand experience, unfortunately. "Ah, here we are."

He walked in front of the door the requisite three times before opening it to reveal a Room of Requirement quite different from the festive chamber where the wedding had been held. It looked like a big warehouse full of forgotten things, or like a particularly capacious attic. "It's just a passageway," he explained, holding the door open for Susan. "The point of it's here," following her inside and letting the door close before crossing the room to a wall hanging behind which was --

-- another door.

Which led to a real passageway, this time, and where they ended up was the upstairs sitting room of the Hog's Head Tavern"Here we are. There are guest rooms down the hallway. They're not recommended very highly. But if you ever wondered what was

[usethepoker]

Susan smiled, slightly wryly. "A friend of mine and I attacked it this last Valentine's Day, and it was unreasonable enough to defend itself," she said. "My child-self thought revenge with a croquet mallet was perfectly logical. Then again, my child-self was also five years old at the time." She'd been a violent little thing, when angry--all the more so because all that violence had been compacted into a creature three feet tall.

She watched, bemused, as Charles paced in front of the door to the Room of Requirement. She followed him through the strange, warehouse-like room, and actually laughed when they emerged at the Hog's Head. That was a trick she'd never even heard about, let alone seen. "Now I see why you didn't need a coat," she said, glancing up and down the hallway. "How on earth did you find out about this? I had no idea, and I know a fair amount of little tricky shortcuts through the castle."

[charlesmacaulay]

"That doesn't answer why you attacked it in the first place, just removes the event a step," Charles pointed out, amused (his amusement, and his frank curiosity, so much like his sister's).

He led her down the stairs and into the main room of the tavern. All told he was rather pleased with himself. He'd elicited a reaction as favorable as he could hope -- a real laugh, even. In a way he really was innocently proud of having found out this little secret passageway, and wanted to show it off, the way he and his friends had once showed off Francis's country house -- something special, only shown to the initiated, like a treehouse.

"Never ask a lady how old she is, and never ask a gentleman how he knows the fastest way to the cheapest bar in town," he said with a mischievous (and quite boyish) grin. "Question is, did you remember the marshmallows I sent you? Because I think they've got cocoa but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for fixings. Cinnamon's right out."

[usethepoker]

Susan's memories of why the tree had been attacked were hazy at best--something she had inhaled had made her not only unable to shut up, but unable to filter what came out of her mouth. "I don't really remember," she said. "I popcorned once, and the first round of chocolate-induced childhood--I've gone through two, now--made me forget even more. Something to do with one a prank pulled at the party, that irritated me immensely."

She smiled again at his prevarication. "All right, I won't ask," she said, and actually produced the marshmallows from her pocket. "I figured these might be necessary. I dno't know if the wizarding world even has proper marshmallows." The Disc certainly didn't; she herself had only discovered them through Shaun.

[charlesmacaulay]

"Maybe not proper, but magically delicious," Charles quipped, then smacked his own forehead showily. "Of course -- you wouldn't know the commercial. It's an advertisement for a cereal for kids. We did watch television when we were kids, you know, even if you wouldn't know it from the way my sister acts nowadays. Anyway the cereal's called Lucky Charms, and it's got multicolored marshmallows in it. Little crunchy ones. I don't know that they'd be any good in cocoa. But the catchphrase for the cereal was 'magically delicious' because of the marshmallows, because they were supposed to be put there by a leprechaun. See, where I come from, we don't have Care of Magical Creatures. Gosh, the wizarding world probably has debates over leprechaun rights or something